Bittersweet
by Kimmydreamer
Summary: My vision of Peter and Nathan as children, the great affection that has always bonded them to each other and the difficult and intense relation with their parents.


Bittersweet

_**New York, 1981**_

_Plus per minus is minus. Per a hundred means moving the point of two positions, so zero point eighty-one._

The pen that Nathan was pitilessly nibbling found finally some peace when the boy started to rub furiously out the result he had previously found, replacing it with the new one.

He watched the copybook and snorted. It had to be twenty-five, damn. _Not _two point five.

Nathan raised his hand and looked at the man leaning at the balcony's balustrade, a cigarette between his fingers and the look pointed in some mysterious direction he was the only one to identify.

The boy thought a bit about it, before standing up, taking the copybook and making for the terrace.

"Hey, dad"

Arthur saw him coming out of the corner.

"What's wrong, here?"

The man turned round to see what his soon was talking about, and snorted. "Dunno, ask your mother"

"She's out" Nathan shrugged his shoulders.

Arthur had a last pair of puffs, before putting out the cigarette against the balustrade and throwing the cigarette end in the ashtray nearby.

"Let me see" he took the notebook from Nathan's hands and gave a quick look at it.

For a moment, Nathan found himself hoping that his father wouldn't found the mistake, that he would admit him that he'd been good and clever and that probably the result the teacher had given him was wrong. For a happy and silly moment, which ended soon.

Before, anyway, that Arthur ended his review and threw back the notebook to his son with a frowning look. "You copied wrong. The second line"

It didn't take long to Nathan to find what his father was referring to: recopying the expression from a passage to the other, he had forgotten a point. _Idiot. _"Oh… thanks. Y'know…" he started, but he bit his tongue. He would have liked to tell him that his professor had assigned to him and other two schoolmates the same exercises that the students two years older did. But he knew that, with every probability, he would have ended up embarrassing both.

"Mh?"

"… no, nothing" Nathan shrugged his shoulders, looking away.

"And please do me the favor of learning to write as a Christian" and finally Nathan managed to catch the pale shadow of a smile on his father's face. "… I can't understand a damn thing"

"Have you ever seen how bad _you _write?!" Nathan widened his eyes and suddenly seemed to draw himself up, but the crying of a waking baby interrupted them in that very moment.

"I go" said the boy without thinking, and in a second he was in his room. He smiled resigned at the wooden crib, even before watching inside.

"… hey, you're a dumping" he commented both amused and disgusted, before bending down and taking the baby that was stretching his arms towards him. "You don't have to eat all the craps that mom gives you"

Peter wasn't crying anymore. Now he was concentrated on the little fist that he was trying to eat, looking at his brother with his big and alert eyes wide opened, the head bending on one side. "And stop taking everything in your mouth" said Nathan moving his hand, and obtaining in change a wet caress on his cheek.

"Ewww, Peter! " but the thing seemed to amuse incredibly his little brother, who answered with a big and toothless smile.

Nathan chuckled between himself, leaving the room and making his way back to the terrace. That baby made him laugh. _Laugh._ Not like a funny story, not like a well made joke. Neither like his literature teacher when he forgot the glasses and looked like a mole, or his friend Stan when he drew all their schoolmates wearing pants.

No. It was completely another thing.

"You wanna go with daddy…?" he asked once arrived, handing the child to the man. And like he should have foreseen, Arthur suddenly got rid of his thoughts, getting away from the balustrade and from his children. "I must go, Nathan. To make a… mh… phone call" he nodded towards the inner of the house. "And change him" he added to his older son, throwing to both a disapproving look, before entering the apartment.

"D… d… da… da…"

"_Yes_, dad" Nathan grumbled. In other occasions he would have found his brother learning to speak extremely funny, probably. _You're such a dull, mate_.

"… dad loves you, Pete"

"… d… da…"

"Yes, he does" and Nathan didn't know who of them he was talking to. "Come on, I know you understand me. If you want I can explain you maths"

And Peter answered with a totally disapproving grimace, making his brother smile victoriously. "Ah! I knew"

"… where is mummy's love?"

Nathan rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry, I'll teach you maths next time. Look at who's coming" and soon an Angela more smiling than ever – beaming like only with Peter she was able to be – had arrived and taken the youngest of her children, before printing a kiss on his soft cheek. "Nathan, what were you waiting for before changing him…?"

The kid snorted. "He just woke up"

"These things have to be done suddenly"

"Yes, sir" retorted Nathan discouraged, a second before his mother took his face in her free hand, raising it to scan it better. For a bit she didn't say anything, and just searched with her detector eyes something that Nathan, honestly, hadn't the palest clue of what could be. He just knew that that bloody nail hammering in his cheek wasn't that enjoyable.

"Go to finish your homework"

"Finished"

"… then clean your room"

Nathan grumbled. "It's cleaned"

"Mh" his mother let him go, watching him with meager satisfaction. Peter had started to cry again.

"Yes, honey, now mummy changes you" and Angela entered the house, while Nathan was leaning at the balustrade and starting to contemplate something known only to him. And he did it in a way that couldn't help to remind the woman someone. She watched him for an instant through the glass of the window, but it ended soon.

She definitely had too much to do, and too many other things to think about.

_**New York, 1991**_

"You have a girlfriend!" Peter swooped like an asteroid fallen from the space in front of his brother's desk, a victorious and too cunning expression painted on his face.

"What…? Peter, I'm studying" the boy pointed at his civil rights book in an evidently unwilling way, but his brother didn't care.

"Dad says that's why you have your head in the clouds since when you came back from Texas"

"And what the fuck is dad supposed to know about it?!"

"_Nathan!_"

Nathan rolled his eyes. "Sorry, mum" he said loudly, looking up.

Peter sat on the bed in front of him, everything but resigned to let it go. "Come on, tell me at least her name"

"She is not my girlfriend"

"Then there is someone"

His brother snorted, leaning against the chair's back and swinging on its posterior legs. "Meredith" he said with fake arrogance.

Peter seemed to try to read something in his brother's face. "She's beautiful?"

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "Totally. Blonde"

The young boy nodded satisfied. "Mh. Seems quite good"

Something shook Nathan and took him back to reality. "Hey, look what you make me say! She isn't my girlfriend" he suddenly recovered himself, starting again to turn over the pages of the book and making Peter laugh.

"Did you sleep with her?"

Nathan looked at him with pity. "You don't even know what that means"

"Of course I know!" Peter widened his eyes.

"And who should have told you?"

"… mum"

The boy sitting at the desk made an horrified grimace. "Well, in that case I would really rather not to know it"

"You want me to explain you?" asked Peter interested, increasing the horror on his brother's face.

"_No_, thank you, Peter, I should study"

"I have a girlfriend too" Peter stood up and looked at his brother with an 'even if you never ask me' printed on his face in large letters.

"Wow" Nathan didn't lift his eyes from his book "… and does she know?"

"It's not funny" grumbled Peter, dragging himself towards the door, evidently sulky.

"… Peter"

He turned to his broche. Now Nathan was looking at him. "Cute?"

Peter shrugged his shoulders. "Blonde" he answered, imitating unconsciously his brother's tone.

Nathan chuckled. "You're too young to lose your brain after blondies. What's her name?"

"Emily" the volume of Peter's voice lowered. "Today we kissed"

Nathan blew a whistle. "Then it's a serious thing"

The young boy blushed. "More or less. Don't tell anyone" and he was going to close the door behind his back.

"Don't worry… Peter?"

"What"

Nathan didn't say anything, and Peter noticed only after a while that he was looking at his hands. "Learn to use markers, snotty kid"

Peter lowered his eyes, to see his own hands pitilessly stained with lines and scribbled of every color.

"Thank you very much" he snorted "… and say hello to _Meredith_" and went out closing the door, making Nathan laugh.


End file.
